Romano-British Drilled Spearmen

[paulburton]

Having looked at the Romano-British List I have a couple of questions:

Why are the Drilled Spearmen in battle groups of 6-8 stands when Dominate Roman Auxilia, which these units are the successors of, can be in groups of 4-8 (4-9 if archers are taken)?

Assuming the base:troop scale is constant I would assume that the groups sizes would be the same. David Mattingly in 'An Imperial Possession' analyses the unit types in the north of England and concludes they are predominately Infantry Cohorts and Alae dating to thePrincipate period rather than later unit types such as Numeri. Again, if they retained the same unit organisation throughout the period they would be in groups of 4-8 given a constant representation scale.

Contemporary Foederate Auxilia also retain the 4-9 grouping.

Secondly
Why is there no option for Votadini in the R-B list?

A contingent was relocated from SE Scotland to North Wales by Vortigern in the mid 5th Century and fought with him against the Saxons. They appear in the Welsh list, though as an early army in the south east of Britain I would expect Vortigern to be representative of the Romano-British culture, with the Roman institutions still largely intact.

'Wolves from the Sea' has not grabbed my attention in the way that 'Legions Triumphant' did. My Foederate/Romano-Brits are in 25mm (though have not seen FoG action yet).

Thanks

Paul

[shall]

Wolves is probably of most interest to the vikings, normans etc. among us - just finishing my 25mm viking army off!! Funnily this is the book that I have enjoyed most as I knew little of the history of that period.

6-9s seems sensible to me from a game feel point of view, but can't speak to the list rationale at all as not deeply involved in that bit.

Si

[nikgaukroger]

Having looked at the Romano-British List I have a couple of questions:

Why are the Drilled Spearmen in battle groups of 6-8 stands when Dominate Roman Auxilia, which these units are the successors of, can be in groups of 4-8 (4-9 if archers are taken)?

Successors of is a clue

Plus, of course, the lesson we learnt from what players have done in actual games, information which we did not have so much of when the earlier books were written. Mr Evans caught us out on that

Assuming the base:troop scale is constant I would assume that the groups sizes would be the same.

Assuming ...

It ain't necessarily so, and BGs are not necessarily units, they can be groupings of units. This makes list writing an art not a science. There is also the issue of getting the "feel" of the army right - which is, of course, somewhat subjective.

David Mattingly in 'An Imperial Possession' analyses the unit types in the north of England and concludes they are predominately Infantry Cohorts and Alae dating to thePrincipate period rather than later unit types such as Numeri. Again, if they retained the same unit organisation throughout the period they would be in groups of 4-8 given a constant representation scale.

They were also rather marginalised in the later period and almost certainly not up to the standard of field units and may well have been very small size wise.

Contemporary Foederate Auxilia also retain the 4-9 grouping.

And remain within the formal Roman military system - but see the point about experience above.

Secondly
Why is there no option for Votadini in the R-B list?

A contingent was relocated from SE Scotland to North Wales by Vortigern in the mid 5th Century and fought with him against the Saxons. They appear in the Welsh list, though as an early army in the south east of Britain I would expect Vortigern to be representative of the Romano-British culture, with the Roman institutions still largely intact.

Didn't think the Welsh list covered the South-East of Britain

Our view was that where the Votadini were that Roman military systems had broken down somewhat earlier hence they are in the Welsh list.